It is common that organizations using commercial off-the-shelf business management software applications (accounting, logistics, and customer relationship management software) need to extend the software to meet their specific requirements. For example, the organizations may need to permit add-on applications (i.e., extensions) to read data from and write data to a database associated with the business management software. Unfortunately, this usually requires creating individual programs using database language statements, for example, structured query language (“SQL”) statements, for each add-on business application. In addition to each add-on application needing code specific to the particular add-on, the code must also be tailored for the specific type database that it is trying to access. Typically, current business management software applications do not directly provide a simple and uniform access mechanism for add-on business applications to access the databases associated with the business management software applications.
There is a need for a method and system to permit business objects to read data from and write data to the business management application database without using database language statements and to have a business object layer communicate with a persistence layer via a well-defined interface.